Open Space & Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

[Music] call to order this meeting of the Open Space and Recreation Committee. We'll begin with a roll call of the committee members to make sure everyone who is here can hear and be heard. Uh Travis Mast, I'm here. Steven Cwley here. And Marie Foley here. Shannon Felen here.

David Robbins is here. Um, Elizabeth said that uh she would not be able to attend tonight. I didn't hear one way or another from uh Trevor. So, I think we are all here that I expect to be here. And we have a fairly brief agenda tonight. It's mostly just status updates on things we've been doing. Uh there's really not a lot to report on. The first topic is the open space inventory which we have been kind of largely me have been maintaining in in in hopes of not having to redo it from scratch when we update the open space and recck plan in a couple of years. But anyway, what's been happening on the open space inventory is sort of the most notable thing that I've been working on with uh with Fiona and with the state. The uh is aligning our open space inventory with what the state the state GIS maintains a a list of protected and recreational areas. So it's basically you know any that includes any you know open space that is protected temporarily or permanently largely conservation land but not just that recreational lands which you know on that they include things like the golf course they don't don't excuse me they don't include other things that we have in our own inventory which is town owned land that's not protected which is chapter land, they don't include that in their inventory. But for the for the parcels that are or should be in their list as well as ours, uh I've been working

through Fiona with the state to match up the lists and uh they their list was seriously out of date. It's they did a major update earlier this year and I've been reviewing that and I have some more updates to send to them. In the process of reviewing that, I've also um found some adjustments or updates that need to be made to our own open space inventory. Not a lot that's major there, but uh just to uh to let you know that's sort of uh we've been working on that. um the uh the regular annual update I do to the inventory based on uh updates to the assessor data and you know any new land acquisitions the town has made. Um I'll be doing working on that over the next month or two. U the town's assessor data which latest data was just uploaded to this to the state. I haven't downloaded that yet, but that's sort of what's what's been happening. I think the sign probably pro it's been fairly significant to me to get the uh get the state data and our own data aligned. So to make sure they're everything they have is up to date and that everything we have is consistent with what they have. So that's been happening. And I think I've mentioned this before in the context of the open the open space inventory data is that eventually Fiona would like to be able to manage that within her office rather than relying on me to manage it. But we're not there yet. Partly because that's the data that I have is really it's in a form that probably no one else could easily work with. I'm working on uh trying to improve upon that. But

anyway, that's our our longerterm objective is to have that, you know, sort of it's kind of fits within the domain of the open space and recck committee here, but uh ultimately we'd like to have have that overseen by town hall. So, any any questions or thoughts on that? If not, the other the other major topic is protection for unprotected open space. At our last meeting back in July, uh the committee wanted to request that the 27 Milford road parcels be put under conservation commission protection and that the highpoint open space whenever that does get accepted by the town is also put under conservation. So, so to take the second one first, High Point has not yet reached that point. I was kind of hoping that they would have their other issues resolved to the point where the fall town meeting would be a time for the town to accept the roadways in the open space, but that's that's still to happen at some point in the future. They're they're still dealing with questions about an old shed that was that is on the property, and they haven't resolved apparently what to do with that. Uh but better news on the 27 Milford road parcels parcels. Um it is on the Falltown meeting warrant to have both of those parcels placed under control of the conservation commission. The select board had discussed it at the last couple meetings and Marie could enlighten us more if she want if she has anything she wants to add as far as what the select board has. But the select board did uh did agree that that was appropriate. There were some questions about whether whether there were other potential uses for the land. I believe those were resolved to the

board satisfaction. So, it's definitely on the town meeting warrant. Uh any uh anything you'd like to add about that, Emry? Um no. It took us two meetings because one member did have some specific questions and between Dave and Evan, they did some digging and and you know he was the questions were answered to his satisfaction. So yeah, it's um the board approved it 50-0 and it is on the the warrant. I suggest you know having folks encourage people to come out to vote in support of that.

Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like it it may be a fairly brief time meeting. There's only 12 articles on the warrant. sort of sort of unusual, but I'm not going to I'm not going to complain about that. And on that topic of protecting space that is open space that is not currently protected, we did have I think there were a list or three or four other parcels that we also thought we should move forward on. We haven't yet I think we we didn't quite formally take a vote. I know I I did send information on three or four which whatever it was. I don't remember off the top of my head. I did uh forward information on that to Fiona with the intent of having having her staff look into these look into the history of those a little bit more to to see if there's any more information available about the current status of those parcels of how how they came to be. Um no further action has been taken them on yet but uh taken on those yet. Uh but I I do plan to you KA's kind of tied up right now. Um but as soon as it as soon as she has a little bit more time available in her office, I I would like to press forward on those additional bars of parcels that we had identified. And I think that for our next meeting, we'll probably want to revisit the list of parcels that are not currently protected, but maybe should be and um make some more definite recommendations on those. I've run across a few that appear to be

per full permanently protected but may deserve some action such as a town meeting vote to more definitively place it. We had I had uh an exchange of information with town council about some you know uncertainty about the protection status and you know particularly when it comes to being having parcels protected under article 97 which makes it very difficult to repurpose them away from a conservation or open space purpose. There is some some ambiguity that we may want to resolve. I want to get some further reading from town council. But I also have uh related to that a question that maybe Travis can have the conservation commission consider and that is we have maybe 30 or so parcels of land that are currently under explicitly under control of the conservation commission. We have some others that are open space either definitely or probably protected but are not currently designated as being controlled by the concom. So a question a question that I'd like to have the conservation commission is does the conservation commission want to be designated as being in control of essentially all of our protected open space? And I don't know I don't know whether there there's a burden on the conservation commission any them not to be designated as being under being the controlling party for that land. Uh but between you and the conservation and the conservation staff it would be

it would be worth knowing what the concom's appetite is for being named as being in control of essentially all of our protected open space. Yeah, I'll I can have Leah put that on the agenda for the next meeting. Yeah, I think like just the the initial reaction would be yeah, we would, but there are like the reality of that is it feasible and that's a question for Leah to discuss with the concom. The alternative would be the land trust or

Yeah. Well, there's a couple of alternatives. Um, one is, yeah, if if if it's not conservation commission control, um, the land trust, I mean, they're they're certainly the land trust is in control of land that they own. Uh, the land trust also gets conservation restrictions for some town owned land. And so the it's not quite sure if you'd call that land trust control but there is a relationship there. But the other possibility the management require or the management responsibilities.

Yeah. The other the other alternative is that the land be designated by deed or town median vote as being reserved strictly for conservation or open space purposes but man managed by the town generally by the essentially managed under the authority or control of the select board. But that it's still even with select board management the land can be permanently protected if it is so designated by either deed or town meeting vote and that's currently the case for some parcels of land in town.

Do you know how many there are that we may take on? I don't know off the top of my head. I didn't think I did did not think to look that up before this meeting. I don't know if there'd be a threshold for us honestly, but yeah. Yeah. So, I guess really the question for Kong is is Yeah. Is there any reason that Kcom would not want to be designated the the manager of some of the land?

I don't think so. But yeah, I'll put that on the agenda for the next meeting. And then I think it also just requires Concom to talk more about like the management of these properties and make sure that we have a vision and a plan to Yep. take care of them. Yeah. It it may well be that no active management is required, right?

Which may depend in part upon whether whether there's anything out like trails would be sort of the first thing comes to my mind. If there are if there are trails on the land then trails generally would require some degree of active management to

maintain the trails but other than that yeah I guess you know it'd be good and I so I'll plan on on our next meeting which maybe we'll do one well it's already October so we could we could think about one for either November or December since but yeah. So for our for our next meeting I'll I'll plan on making that a topic of both you know further consideration of lands we've already identified as we want to get more protected um lands that may or may not be considered for conservation. Yeah.

Okay. Um, yeah, I I should have thought to prepare a to prepare a list of those, but also my my list is probably going to change slightly, you know, depending on the final outcome of the revisions I'm making to the open space inventory cuz I think I think I may I may have found and again I don't have that in front of me. I may have found some land that is not as protected as I thought it was or land that is or should be more protected than I thought it was. So bas based on and I should have that all that wrapped up within a month or so on the uh alignment with the state and and the latest the latest updates to our own inventory. So, if I get that all lined up, I like I said, I should have that done in a month or so. But, so maybe hopefully for our next meeting whenever it is, uh, we can we can review the current status of all of our open space protected and unprotected properties and see where we want to go from there. But at least, yay, we're we're we expect to be successful at protecting two big parcels of unprotected open space that in your neighborhood, Stephen.

Very nice. So, it seems like we've been working on that for a long time. It I don't think anybody is was looking for it. So it's it it it wasn't a wasn't a real a need an emergency anything like that. This is true. I mean that that land has been sitting there existing as open space. Yeah.

For decades. And no one no one no one is really I mean when it's sort of sitting there being open space even even though it's not protected it's it's not something that's crying out for a change. No, no, no, nor it's. It's not easily accessible for any other use than recreation, which is I I I've I've walked those those paths for years and it's I never even thought about it, losing it. I never thought about losing it. Yep. And Marie,

let me just do this first. Um, yeah. So, I just wondered if maybe for our next meeting, I was reading the meeting minutes from the first set of meeting minutes, which was a uh before I was back on the committee, put it that way, and you guys had in fact in those minutes that were um approving this evening identified at least four properties, one of them I know on institute and then there were maybe two or three others that are in those minutes. Like, could we put those few on our last next agenda or maybe a couple of them to kind of start the same process? Yes, that's that is exactly what I had in mind. Thank you.

Part of what I had in mind anyway was yes, you to uh to follow up on those that we had already talked about and then identify some maybe we'll identify some additional ones that we want to uh push forward on. Okay. So, that's where we're that's where we're at with that right now. And we'll we'll uh we'll do more on that topic at our next meeting. Anything else and anybody wants to discuss on that topic? If not, we have our final agenda item is the approval of previous meeting minutes of which we have minutes for the previous two meetings. Yeah. Do you have the dates on those handy? I was just trying to look.

I have uh I I can make a uh the first one is February 12th, 2025. I will vote for I I I had both the dates. We could just do it together probably. So was the other one? February 12th. Yep. 2025 and July 16th, 2025. Right. I move that we approve the minutes um as draft as sent to us in draft form of February the 12th, 2025 and 716 of 2025.

Second moved and seconded. Um any discussion? I when I read through those minutes, I did not see anything that I thought needed changing. So, any other discussion? If not, good. What? You're good. Okay. All right. We're all good. So, we'll call for a vote then. Amry, fully I. Stephen, yes. Travis, yes. Shannon I

and Dave votes eye. Motion carried unanimously. The minutes are approved. Uh as far as scheduling our next meet is concerned. Um would you guys want to meet again in around the middle of November or early December? I think at our last out of July meeting we kind of thought well we maybe don't need to be meeting every month. So if we if we go to a at least for now looking at every two months then that would put us into early December. I would I would love to um meet a little bit more frequently like every month just because I do think it's important to keep moving on some of those parcels like even though 27 Milford I

even though it was had just been sitting there for years and years it was kind of scary to see that it might have been the subject of like a feasibility study. So um I think it's I would love to to meet monthly. That's my recommendation. Thank you. Can we meet the week before Thanks this Thanksgiving week? Yes. Like six weeksish. So kind of meet in the middle. Yep.

Yeah. So we be let's see November. We be looking at maybe the 12th or the 19th. I think I've got something else that maybe that may happen have to be the 12th. So the new November 19th it's Yeah. It's a week before Thanksgiving. I could do the 19th. I don't think I can do the 12th. That's That's good. I don't think I can do that. Works for me. Yep. Same here. I'm available.

All right. So, we we will plan on meeting again November 19th and uh we'll pick up on our continued work towards securing firmer protection for some of our land. Right. Right. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Moved and seconded that this meeting be adjourned. Ann Mary? Uh, yes. Steven, yes. Travis, yes. Shannon, yes. And Davos, yes. Motion carried unanimous.